As a young boy growing up in the Netherlands, Troy Hale once released a balloon with his name and address attached in hopes that someone, somewhere would find it. No one ever did. Now, decades later, he’s trying something like that again.

Hale is now a media specialist at Michigan State University. On Thursday, he'll launch a homemade helium balloon outfitted with several digital cameras from a weather station in Pontiac. He hopes to send it to 100,000 feet to document the experience of going into space.